


Largo

by Awenna



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Broken Heart, Feelings, Gen, Reminiscing, Sad, and Nile who comes to give her a blanket and tea and hold her hand, and technically also Booker and Quynh, but only insofar as she thinks about then, the weather mirrors the feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:42:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26822356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Awenna/pseuds/Awenna
Summary: She wishes she still had hope of finding her one day, of turning around and seeing her. But hope, no matter how big or small, hurts so much.Hurt is what makes us human. We have to feel to be. But sometimes it is so much. It is too much.Her heart breaks once more.Her heart who was taken out of her, ripped from her body all those years ago, all those centuries ago. It breaks again and again and again.And she cannot patch it.- In which Andy is watching the ocean and thinking about her French brother and her Vietnamese heart.
Kudos: 9





	Largo

**Author's Note:**

> I was reading an article for class and listening to my Daily Mix on Spotify when [Chopin's Prelude no.4 in E minor](https://open.spotify.com/track/5XfmcJMAaifjRrIdLaXVLm?si=gLBeG7s0RC-76d-p3kJd3g) started playing and it gave me a lot of feelings which I started the write on the TOG discord and then moved to a Word document to edit and add to it. A bit more than an hour later, here we are. I could probably improve on it, but I still have an article to read and no time to edit it more and add to it so here you go.
> 
> I recommend you listen to Chopin's Prelude which I have linked above.

_Somewhere on the coast of Finistère, a late winter day_

A lone figure is sat on the short grass of high Breton cliff. She is not too close to the cliff so that only a gust of wind stronger than the other might make her fall, but close enough to see the rocks at the bottom of that cliff being battered by the wind and the high waves, incessantly coming and going in a never-ending dance. The sky is grey. The clouds are everywhere. They would make the world feel too small is the wind was not there to bring air. So much air that it sometimes makes it hard to breathe. _Or maybe something else is causing it._

The temperature is not that cold for the season, but she is not wearing more than a light coat on top of her grey woollen jumper matching the colour of the sky. The humidity is going through her clothes, leaving no place to hide in the immensity of the planes and making her shiver.

She does not care.

The ground is still humid from the rain earlier that day. Her trousers are not as dry as they were when she came to sit on this grass many minutes before. The rain had stopped. It would start again soon. She can feel it. She is after all older than all of those countryside folks who can predict the weather accurately from all the signs around them. She knows the signs. She wishes she did not. She wishes she did not have all of this knowledge, all of these memories, all of this loss.

This figure on the grass, on the cliff, alone facing the immensity of the ocean, her back straight, so strong and yet so little, looks at the waves in front of her, coming and going in their incessant ballad, who had started before her birth and would continue long after her death. Her eyes look lost in the immensity facing her.

Her body is here, but her mind is with the wind far away.

She thinks of her brother, her little brother, her partner in crime, the one they had had to send away after his action, after his betrayal, to atone, to reflect, and to come back strong while they healed. She knows that he will be back with them before his sentence ends, but not before the end of his penance.

She does not know when that will be. She does not know who she will be, what she will look like then, when that will be. Time, this resource which seemed to be in such abondance before is slipping through her fingers. She does not know if she cares. _She does. She does not. It hurts._

Her brother, her youngest brother, so tortured, so lost and she did not see. And she did not see.

She had been so lost in herself, so lost that she had not seen. She had not seen the cry for help that resonated in every single of his action since that time he had come back to them after his heart had been broken by the incessant passing of time. They had thought action would be enough to help. And it had. For a time. A short time. But any moment of calm, any moment away from the others brought back the sadness, the feeling of tightness in one’s chess, the feeling that this will never go away, that one is chasing something that will forever evade you, that you are Orpheus trying to hold onto the ghost of Eurydice sent back to Hell after you turned back when you should not have.

She had been going through the motion and had not seen. She had not seen how lost he was. She had not recognised the signs in him, the ones that were present in herself, the ones that she avoided, that she had tried to delude herself from. That she had hoped would go away. Or that she had not dared looking at for fear that all hope would leave her then. She had not wanted to see in him the same hole that was feeding from her broken heart, from her sadness, and her tiredness. They were kindred spirits, an efficient duet, him the youngest, her the oldest. _La valeur n’attend pas le nombre des années_ , say the French. It was true. But hopelessness did not wait either.

They had lost hope, both of them, her even more than him even though not in the same way.

And she had not seen. Not seen until that fateful moment when he had looked at her and had spoken to her in that broken voice. Until that moment when he had shot her in the back. How very appropriate. Her heart broke. For herself, for him. If only she had seen, if only she had understood, if only she had realised before.

A wave crashes on the rocks below and she looks down at the sea, at the water and then back at the sky. The clouds have darked, the storm is coming closer, the rain is falling on the horizon.

And she thinks of her love, her lover, her heart. Lost to the sea somewhere, on the ocean ground somewhere in the ocean in front of her, the ocean she had been on for so many trips trying to find her.

But she had not found her. She had abandoned her. She had not meant to. Of course, she had not. But she had done it. Intent did not matter as long as the impact was there. And her heart was still gone, faraway, lost, impossible to find.

They had searched her for years and years, for longer than the life of many people at the time. But their search had been fruitless, and the risks were growing higher and higher with each passing year. The sea is a dangerous mistress. She takes, and she takes, and she takes.

She wishes she still had hope of finding her one day, of turning around and seeing her. But hope, no matter how big or small, hurts so much.

Hurt is what makes us human. We have to feel to be. But sometimes it is so much. It is too much.

Her heart breaks once more.

Her heart who was taken out of her, ripped from her body all those years ago, all those centuries ago. It breaks again and again and again.

And she cannot patch it.

Her immortality could not repair it and now that she was mortal again, she does not think her body will be more capable of doing it.

If anything, she feels her heart more. She can barely breathe sometimes when she thinks too much, when her mind wanders too much, when she is reminded of the family she has lost. Of her long-lost brother who died all those years ago. Of her heart and soul who she misses everyday like a part of herself which is gone and only leaves phantom pain. Of her younger brother which has been part of her life for so little time and yet has suffered silently for so long, just as she has.

The wind further intensifies. The storm is nearly there. _Or maybe it is already here. Maybe it has been here all along._

She continues to think about her love, her family, her loss, about the feeling in her chest, about the hole which feels like it is about to swallow her whole, about her heart broken so many times, and repaired as she could, with what she had, not very well, but somewhat. She starts crying. Or perhaps it is the rain which has started and is falling in droplets on her cheeks.

She stays there. Silent. With only the sound of the wind and the waves in her ears. Her mind empty and full. So many questions in her mind. So many regrets. So much longing. She feels like she is one with the landscape around her. She is so old that she might be. She stays still. Her eyes closing. Breathing slowly. Simply existing.

Later, when the rain falls harder and harder, a dark silhouette approaches with an umbrella to take her back inside in the little Breton house not far, help her change clothes, and stay on the sofa next to the hearth with a plaid on her legs, a cup of tea in one hand and a hand in her other hand. Even when her heart is lost, broken, pieced back together, she still feels the love of her family around her. It is not perfect, but it is enough.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked this. Feel free to leave a comment below and give a kudo. You can also find me on tumblr @dontbesoevil.  
> I hope you have a lovely day!


End file.
